HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY

Today’s highlight:

On Dec. 8, 1941, the United States entered World War II as Congress declared war against Imperial Japan, a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

On this date:

1854: Pope Pius IX proclaimed the Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was free of original sin from the moment of her own conception.

1863: President Abraham Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction for the South. 1972: A United Airlines Boeing 737 crashed while attempting to land at Chicago-Midway Airport, killing 43 of the 61 people on board, as well as two people on the ground; among the dead were Dorothy Hunt, wife of Watergate conspirator

E. Howard Hunt, U.S. Rep.

George W. Collins, D-Ill., and CBS News correspondent

Michele Clark. 1980: Rock star John Lennon was shot to death outside his New York City apartment building by an apparently deranged fan.

1982: A man demanding an end to nuclear weapons held the Washington Monument hostage, threatening to blow it up with explosives he claimed were inside a van. After a 10-hour standoff,

Norman D. Mayer was shot dead by police; it turned out there were no explosives. 1987: President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty at the White House calling for destruction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles. 1991: AIDS patient Kimberly Bergalis, who had contracted the disease from her dentist, died in Fort Pierce, Florida, at age 23.

1992: Americans got to see live TV coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia as Operation Restore Hope began (because of the time difference, it was early Dec. 9 in Somalia). 1998: Struggling to stave off impeachment, President Bill Clinton’s defenders forcefully pleaded his case before the House Judiciary Committee. The Supreme Court ruled that police cannot search people and their cars after merely ticketing them for routine traffic violations.